Raccoon Lodge

59 Warren St. (212-227-9894)

The beloved thirty-three-year-old lower-Manhattan mainstay—decorated with duck decoys, a moose head with hard hats on its antlers, and the double-rifles video game Big Buck Hunter—has long been a watering hole that attracts the whole village. Bankers, writers, ponytailed tough guys, women in tight pants, men with braids like Axl Rose: everybody sits side by side, drinking their fireballs and Honker’s Ale, as the jukebox flows amiably from the Pure Prairie League to Jane’s Addiction to 2 Chainz. One night this spring, after the Tribeca Film Festival, a young filmgoer said that his father used to drink there, and the bartender, Blaze Nowara, said that his dad, the owner, might have met him. Nowara also said that the bar was threatened with extinction: a developer wanted to raze the Raccoon Lodge and its neighbors to build luxury condos. A few weeks later, another bartender stapled a Stop Demolishing Tribeca flyer to the wall as her customers drank bracingly stiff Manhattans. Now the bar has until December to get out. Grieving, in the form of revelling, is ongoing. Last week, Nowara, looking game but glum, served a Buddy Guy enthusiast Jack-and-Cokes and nodded his head toward some tattooed men at the end of the bar. “They’re from Hogs & Heifers,” he said. “Their rent got raised from fourteen grand a month to sixty. They’re closing August 23rd.” ♦

Sarah Larson is a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her column, Podcast Dept., appears weekly on newyor­ker.com.